It's a Good Idea to Use Multiple Tools When Researching and Developing Keywords

Recently, I did keyword research for one of our clients. The client is an online retailer that sells snowboard and skateboard gear. When I was researching keywords, I came across a discrepancy within Google’s keyword research tools. First, I used Google’s Keyword Tool to research some general snowboarding terms. I looked at snowboarding equipment and snowboarding gear in exact match and examined their estimated monthly volumes. Below is a screen capture of the researched keywords on exact match:

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I then used a second tool to analyze these two terms. I turned to Google Insights and found the following:

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Now look how different Google reports on these two terms. As you can see when Google Keyword Tool was used, snowboarding equipment has almost 14 times the amount of average monthly search traffic when compared to the keyword term snowboarding gear. Then when Google Insights was used to evaluate these terms, snowboarding gear clearly has more traffic than snowboarding equipment.

Overall, it is very important to use multiple keyword research tools to identify the right keywords to target for a SEO or SEM campaign. Even Google conflicts with its own self. Make sure you exhaust every resource before you are officially done.